Homelessness takes center stage in chaotic Salt Lake City mayoral debate
In a fiery and at times chaotic debate Monday night, Salt Lake City’s three mayoral candidates sparred for an hour and a half straight with less than a month to go until Election Day on Nov. 21.
The debate hosted by Solutions Utah, a nonprofit advocacy group, and The Other Side Academy, a Salt Lake-based nonprofit devoted to drug treatment and life-skills training to rehabilitate homeless individuals and substance abusers, largely focused on how to tackle Salt Lake City’s homelessness and on-street camping issues.
Retired longtime TV reporter Rod Decker moderated the debate, relentlessly interjecting to keep the candidates to their allotted time while also pressing them to address unanswered questions.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and her opponents — former mayor Rocky Anderson and community activist and business owner Michael Valentine — all came out swinging at each other, racing to defend themselves while answering questions before Decker cut them off.
Anderson and Valentine lobbed attack after attack at Mendenhall and her administration for being too involved with homeless camp abatements while not doing enough to house and care for the homeless. Mendenhall fought back, arguing more is being done for homelessness and affordable housing than ever in city history and that she has brought other city, county and state partners to the table on the issue.
The clock is ticking down to Election Day, which could mark a turning point in Salt Lake City leadership. Will Utah’s capital city voters choose to grant Mendenhall a second four-year term, or will they return Anderson to the mayor’s office after he served from 2000 to 2008? Or will they choose an entirely new face with Valentine?
Here are the highlights from Monday’s debate held at The Other Side Academy’s campus at 667 E. 100 South in downtown Salt Lake City:
Homelessness, camping and abatements
Mendenhall used her opening statement to preempt her opponents’ attacks that her administration’s efforts to build The Other Side Village, Utah’s first tiny home community for the chronically homeless, “isn’t happening fast enough.”
“That kind of impatience is indicative of someone who cares more about taking credit than getting it right,” Mendenhall said, crediting her team with working at “lightning speed” to build the village “quickly and safely. And I’m so happy that dirt is moving at that site right now.”
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Anderson indeed jabbed at Mendenhall for not working fast enough to open up more beds for the homeless, saying they’ve endured “two vicious winters” while Salt Lake County’s existing homeless resource centers overflowed and on-street camping spilled into neighborhoods.
Describing himself as formerly homeless, Valentine, a real estate agent and a owner of a local cider shop, started by decrying “horrifying” homeless camp abatements. “They’re unjust, immoral, they’re unconstitutional, they violate homeless people’s constitutional human rights,” he said, blaming Mendenhall for directing city police to support those cleanups.
Mendenhall sought to defend herself on both fronts, arguing homeless camp abatements “are required by the state of Utah” to be conducted by county health departments and cities are required to support the cleanups. “So banning abatements is actually not the purview of any mayor in the state of Utah,” she said. “The Legislature can do that. Let’s be real.”
Sanctioned camping, overflow beds
“This has been a lose-lose-lose situation,” Anderson said, pledging to “eliminate encampments in our city” while providing sanctioned camping, starting with one at the shuttered Wingpointe Golf Course near the Salt Lake City International Airport.
Mendenhall argued Anderson’s plan to create a sanctioned camp at Wingpointe would put homeless people “miles and miles” from food, transportation and jobs.
“This is sweeping people under the rug and is dangerous because he’s making promises that are actually completely unfeasible,” Mendenhall said. Instead, she pointed to her administration and the state’s plan to open a temporary sanctioned camping area at 300 S. 600 West with “pods” for 50 people and no more, because a camp any bigger would become “difficult and dangerous” to manage.
Anderson and Valentine criticized the lack of availability of homeless resource center beds and other resources for the homeless, arguing Salt Lake County’s homeless centers essentially filled up soon after opening.
“This mayor left hundreds of people out in the bitter freezing cold,” Anderson said, adding some have died and lost fingers and toes “because this mayor did not do what was necessary to provide shelter for people left out in the cold.”
Mendenhall acknowledged the closure of the downtown Road Home shelter in 2019 “absolutely left us in a lurch” with “at least 300 fewer beds.” But she noted that happened when she was a Salt Lake City councilwoman and under former Gov. Gary Herbert, then House Speaker Greg Hughes, former Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams and a “reluctant” former Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski.
Mendenhall argued she has worked to help open some 600 homeless overflow beds since 2019 and continues to urge other cities to participate. She said the state has also put more money toward homelessness and affordable housing in the past two years than ever before, to the tune of over $110 million, while the city has leveraged $56 million to help create 4,000 affordable units across the city since 2020.
Valentine and Anderson were seemingly at odds when it came to enforcing no-camping ordinances and arresting people for property crimes. Valentine said “people have the right to exist in a public space if they have nowhere else to go,” and he’d refuse to spend city resources on police “harassing homeless people, throwing their belongings away.” He also railed against “criminalizing homelessness” and arresting them for petty crimes.
If a homeless person is told to move along and they have a sanctioned camping area as an alternative, Anderson said “they don’t have that choice” to refuse. Anderson also said Salt Lake City police should be more consistent and responsive to arrest perpetrators of public nuisance crimes that trouble downtown businesses.
Mendenhall said she has “whiplash” from all these arguments. She argued the criticisms paint a black and white picture: either the police are “too involved” when it comes to enforcing sanctioned camping and addressing crime or they “turn a blind eye.”
“That couldn’t be more untrue,” she said. “I don’t care what your housing status is. If you are committing a crime, you should be arrested. The Salt Lake City Police Department is out there doing a great job, and they’re working hard.”
Correction: An earlier version stated the incorrect address for Salt Lake City and state officials’ planned temporary sanctioned camping area. It’s planned for a parcel near 300 S. 600 West, not 5558 W. 300 South.
